10 THINGS I DON’T BUY ANYMORE // minimalism + saving money

Minimalism not only frees your home of
clutter and chaos – it can save you some money. In this video, I’m going to talk
about ten things I no longer buy since embracing a more minimalist lifestyle. If
you’re interested, keep watching! Hello hello! Welcome back to The Whole Happy
Life. If you’re a new subscriber, thank you very much for subscribing and
welcome to the channel and if you’ve been a subscriber for a while,
thank you for rejoining me. So the first thing I no longer buy is extensive
cleaning products. Now if you know me I like cleaning and I used to have a lot
of cleaning products – like a cleaning product for literally everything but
I’ve realized over the years that you don’t need that many cleaning products
and the simpler your cleaning routine the better because the more likely you are to
do it. So I’ve watched a lot of videos on Clean My space and I noticed she
doesn’t use too many products – so I’m going to link her video in the
description box below about what she uses and I think I’m more or less using
what she uses. So basically there’s soap, water, vinegar and I try to buy the
cleaning vinegar which is a lot stronger than the regular vinegar you get in the
grocery store and rubbing alcohol. Sometimes I’ll use hydrogen peroxide and
baking soda and that’s pretty much it. I don’t have anything else. My cleaning
routine is a lot simpler and it’s a lot safer. I’m not breathing in noxious fumes
all the time. Number two- physical gifts. So in the past
I used to buy a lot of gifts for my friends and family that were physical
items and while there’s nothing wrong with this, a lot of times you don’t know
what your friend or what your family member wants and you end up buying
things that could potentially become clutter in their home. I don’t like
clutter in my home and I don’t want to add to the clutter in someone else’s
home, so I’ve started to give my friends non-physical gifts, basically gifts of
experience. For example ,for my best friend, for her birthday in January
I gave her ticket to a mindfulness clay workshop and not just a ticket for her,
for me as well! So two tickets – we went for this workshop, we had a good time and
it was a memorable experience and a chance to bond. I am a big fan of
the non-physical gifts and I intend to do that more often.
Number three -kitchen gadgets. So I am a kitchen gadget lover… in my former life! I
don’t do it anymore. I used to have gadgets for all sorts of
random things. I had a strawberry slicer, like who needs a strawberry
slicer? Well I for some reason thought I needed one. So there’s a store in Canada
called Kitchen Stuff Plus and it has every possible kitchen gadget out there
and I used to go crazy there but now that I’m more of a minimalist I don’t
buy those things. I think when it comes to kitchen gadgets they’re nice in the
beginning but once that novelty wears off you’re never using them so I try not
to buy excessive kitchen gadgets. Number four – books and magazines. if you’ve
watched any of my previous videos you know I’ll talk about this again and
again and I’m a big believer in getting your books and your magazines from the
library first first so I’m not saying you never buy books and I’m not saying I
never buy books I do but I only buy books if I truly love them and I want
them to be part of my collection but in general I try to get most of my books
from the library it’s inexpensive I mean fines I guess the fines are a
little expensive but other than that it’s inexpensive and I have so much
variety and same goes with magazines I used to have a lot of magazine
subscriptions I think I would spend close to 100 bucks a year on magazines I
don’t do that anymore I get them from the library so there’s
no clutter and it saving me money. Number five bottled water. So I’ve never
really been a big bottled water person it’s only when I was on the go or out
and about but now I try to make a conscious effort to take a reusable
water bottle with me everywhere I go and I fill it with my own water at home –
filtered tap water and it’s fine I don’t really feel the need to buy bottled
water because the problem with bottled water is -even if you recycle the bottles
it’s still an energy intensive process to produce them and it’s still not as
environmentally friendly as using your own water from home so I try to limit my
consumption of all sorts of bottled beverages and
stick to the reusable bottles. Number six clothes that I’ll only wear once or
twice or very few times so in the past I wouldn’t think too much about the
clothes I purchased as long as I liked them I would buy them sometimes they were
impulse purchases I never really thought about how many times I would wear it and
recently I’ve employed this concept called cost per wear so it’s a cost of
the item per time I wear it so as an example let’s say I have a gala to go to
and I want to buy a nice dress I have two options here I have a red dress and
a black dress the red dress is fancy and I know I’m probably never gonna wear it
again this is really fancy and I can only wear it at this gala and it’s $400
so the cost per wear this dress is 400 because I’ll only wear it once
now I could buy a black dress which is a little simpler and I could probably wear it to
more events and let’s say I buy that dress for $400 as well but I wear that
black dress four times the cost per wear of the black dress is $100 per wear
which is significantly less than the $400 cost per wear of the other dress so my
point here is that I try to buy clothes that I can wear more often and that have
lower cost for wears so that way I’m not cluttering my closet with things that I
won’t wear more than once and I’m saving some money in the process and I think
it’s also environmentally friendly because you’re not buying so many
textiles. Number-7 handbags and accessories that don’t match with
majority of my outfits so in the past I was a handbag fiend, fanatic I don’t
even know what to call myself I had a lot of handbags and some of them were
very patterned and didn’t go with a lot of my clothes and because of that I was
only wearing them very limited times a year maybe four to five times a year and
it felt like such a waste to spend so much money on something that I’m only
going to wear occasionally so now I try to keep my handbags accessories jewelry
very very simple so it can go with a lot more of my outfits and I get a lot more
wear out of it Number eight room freshener air
freshener perfume fragrance products I loved buying anything fragranced
and I think I overdid it I would buy those plugins scented candles
perfume from my body like random things and I think I was dealing with scent
overload it was too much and it’s a lot of money that I spent and I don’t really
think I need that in my life anymore the main reason I quit buying frangranced products
is it’s not so good for your health most fragranced products contain
something called phthalates. Phthalates our are endocrine disrupters which measn they
impact our hormones I don’t want to be breathing something in that is impacting
my hormones so phthalates are out for me I don’t buy anything with phthalates in
it anymore and in general I don’t spend money on fragranced products I try to
keep it natural or just nothing at all but if you want your house it smell good
and you do want something a little something but you don’t want to buy the
fragranced products I have a little trick for you so I learned this off of
Pinterest you can get a saucepan add a little bit of water add some cloves some
cinnamon some orange peel a little bit of vanilla extract you can use the
artificial kind and let it boil and then simmer for about 10 minutes it will make
your house smell amazing I promise it will smell like you just baked something
it’s so good and you don’t have to worry about potentially harmful chemicals in
the air and it’s cheap and you’re not buying all these products so it’s
minimalistic. Number-9 pre-made sauces dressings condiments any prepackaged
items from the grocery store so I love a good condiment or a sauce or a dressing
I really do and in the past I used to buy all sorts of stuff the problem is
not only does it add to the clutter in your kitchen and your cupboard it’s also
not so good for your health a lot of the things that are on the market have all
sorts of added preservatives that you don’t need all sorts of added sugar so I
prefer to make my items at home and that way I don’t have all this clutter in my
kitchen and the other thing is I don’t have to worry about all the recycling
that I would need to do let’s face it even if we recycle something it’s not
necessarily going to be recycled sometimes recyclable items do end up in
the landfill and I just don’t think it’s
environmentally friendly to be buying so many prepackaged products so when I can
avoid it I avoid
it. Number 10 toys cat toys kids toys any toys so I don’t have kids so I can’t
speak to that but I have cats and I love buying them toys but I’ve realized they
don’t like it they actually like their core group of three to four toys and
they’re happy with that everything else is extraneous they have
zero interest maybe for a day and then they completely lose interest and I’m
assuming with kids it’s somewhat the same and toys are just clutter that you
don’t need in your home so no more toy no more excessive toy shopping for me! So
those are the ten things I don’t buy anymore. What are the things that you
don’t buy anymore? I’d love to hear about that so let me know in the comment box
below. If you enjoyed this video, give it a thumbs up and don’t forget to
subscribe. I will see you in the next video. Bye!